This article is an important read for anyone who is concerned about the direction pop culture has taken....

A new analysis of the American Freshman Survey, which has accumulated data for the past 47 years from 9 million young adults, reveals that college students are more likely than ever to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, even though their test scores and time spent studying are decreasing.

Psychologist Jean Twenge, the lead author of the analysis, is also the author of a study showing that the tendency toward narcissism in students is up 30 percent in the last thirty-odd years.
This data is not unexpected. I have been writing a great deal over the past few years about the toxic psychological impact of media and technology on children, adolescents and young adults, particularly as it regards turning them into faux celebrities—the equivalent of lead actors in their own fictionalized life stories.

On Facebook, young people can fool themselves into thinking they have hundreds or thousands of “friends.” They can delete unflattering comments. They can block anyone who disagrees with them or pokes holes in their inflated self-esteem. They can choose to show the world only flattering, sexy or funny photographs of themselves (dozens of albums full, by the way), “speak” in pithy short posts and publicly connect to movie stars and professional athletes and musicians they “like.”

We must beware of the toxic psychological impact of media and technology on children, adolescents and young adults, particularly as it regards turning them into faux celebrities—the equivalent of lead actors in their own fictionalized life stories.

Using Twitter, young people can pretend they are worth “following,” as though they have real-life fans, when all that is really happening is the mutual fanning of false love and false fame.

Using computer games, our sons and daughters can pretend they are Olympians, Formula 1 drivers, rock stars or sharpshooters. And while they can turn off their Wii and Xbox machines and remember they are really in dens and playrooms on side streets and in triple deckers around America, that is after their hearts have raced and heads have swelled with false pride for “being” something they are not.

We used to call this behavior spoiled brats, everybody has to have a string of initials to define their dysfunction today, and it is never your own fault.

marv

01-09-2013, 03:01 AM

...everybody has to have a string of initials to define their dysfunction today,...

Such as MBA, JD, PhD,.........

noonwitch

01-09-2013, 11:03 AM

I read a book last year called Hurt 2.0. It was a Christian ministry to kids kind of book, but the guy who wrote it spent a lot of time with teens through teaching and through groups like Young Life and laid out how isolated our kids are from the adults in their lives. They value their peers more, mainly because their parents have been too busy with their lives to be involved with those of their children, so they filled that absence with peers, and the approval of the peer group supercedes any family bond. There was a lot more to the book overall, and I think that parents who are involved with their children raise kids who end up either being able to resist the peer group pressure or who end up being the leaders of their peer groups.

After reading it, I realized that the problems that used to be pretty much exclusively those of children in the foster care system 25 years ago and more, when I was new in the field or a teen myself, are now pretty common among average teenagers.

FlaGator

01-09-2013, 12:10 PM

We are looking at another example of the ensuing issues caused by the decaying family structure. Instead of getting their sense of self worth from their family, faith and from the tangible outcome of hard work and study, children seem to be getting it from their peers and then filtering out the negative. The schools teach them that no one fails (when in the real world people fail all the time) so when they do fail they don't know how to learn from the experience. If you give a kid a trophy simply because he played on a baseball team where is the incentive to get better at the sport? Why work harder than the rest for something everyone is going to get anyways. On top of this society tells them how great it is that they got the trophy even though they only had to show up to get it.

We wonder where the narcissism and arrogance of our children have comes from. It comes from the failed society to which we turned our children over. A failed society tells its self how great it is and then tells its members that they are great because they are members, all the while both spiral into an existence that is less than mediocre.

Parents stick their children in daycare centers because they are too busy to raise them and then are surprised when the children grow up and put their parents in nursing homes. This is what we taught them to do. Too busy to be bothered with responsibilities and unwilling to make the hard choice then let some one else deal with the issue. This is the ultimate end of narcissism, to see your life as more important than the life you created or the life that created you.

Novaheart

01-09-2013, 12:24 PM

This article is an important read for anyone who is concerned about the direction pop culture has taken....

I don't find it surprising at all and I don't think it has to do with video games. It has to do with the dumbing down of high school.

When my mom and dad went to high school they graduated with the ability to read as well as speak the English language to the degree that they could diagram sentences and do all that tense and agreement stuff. Mom learned math sufficient to breeze college and then handle huge sums of government money for the Navy. Dad learned math well enough to go to a prestigious engineering school. They both learned science (biology, chemistry, earth), real science even in the dark ages.

By the time I came along, high school was "boring". Sure, there were high end classes but what future millionaire needs to study chemistry? I glided through high school and most of college on above average intelligence combined with some serious Catholic school education and a few testing tricks taught in my high school.

Now high schools are proud of themselves when the graduates can read instructions and fill out job applications at Walmart all by themselves. Perhaps not that simpleminded, but it seems that a lot of our high school students lack a sixth grade education. So the kids who are intelligent and who do learn can either work themselves to death in AP courses so they can go to medical school, or they can glide through high school, and then glide through a BA, figuring that nothing really matters until grad school anyway.

FlaGator

01-09-2013, 12:43 PM

I don't find it surprising at all and I don't think it has to do with video games. It has to do with the dumbing down of high school.

When my mom and dad went to high school they graduated with the ability to read as well as speak the English language to the degree that they could diagram sentences and do all that tense and agreement stuff. Mom learned math sufficient to breeze college and then handle huge sums of government money for the Navy. Dad learned math well enough to go to a prestigious engineering school. They both learned science (biology, chemistry, earth), real science even in the dark ages.

By the time I came along, high school was "boring". Sure, there were high end classes but what future millionaire needs to study chemistry? I glided through high school and most of college on above average intelligence combined with some serious Catholic school education and a few testing tricks taught in my high school.

Now high schools are proud of themselves when the graduates can read instructions and fill out job applications at Walmart all by themselves. Perhaps not that simpleminded, but it seems that a lot of our high school students lack a sixth grade education. So the kids who are intelligent and who do learn can either work themselves to death in AP courses so they can go to medical school, or they can glide through high school, and then glide through a BA, figuring that nothing really matters until grad school anyway.

Once that dumbing down of high school began the other things like video games, violent movies, trophies for all, etc became players in the issue.

Novaheart

01-09-2013, 12:54 PM

Once that dumbing down of high school began the other things like video games, violent movies, trophies for all, etc became players in the issue.

I'm waiting for someone to make the connection between video games and pot. Seriously, the only people I am acquainted with (ie the guys I hire for menial labor) who are totally into video games are potheads.

marv

01-09-2013, 01:10 PM

I'm waiting for someone to make the connection between video games and pot. Seriously, the only people I am acquainted with (ie the guys I hire for menial labor) who are totally into video games are potheads.

I don't think that one causes the other. But I do think that character and personal behavior, absent any psychological disorder, learned from earliest childhood would lead an individual to either or both. The desire for instant gratification plays into this.

noonwitch

01-09-2013, 01:30 PM

Once that dumbing down of high school began the other things like video games, violent movies, trophies for all, etc became players in the issue.

I hate lumping "trophies for all" with the other things that fill the void for the kids. There are good reasons to give awards to kids for participating in things, even if they don't win. Sportsmanship awards, "most improved" awards-these are things that can encourage a kid who struggles with a challenge to persevere and not give up too soon.

But I do agree that the general dumbing down of our society, both the general culture and many of the schools, is leading to serious problems for the current generation of youth. My SIL was told me over X-mas that their oldest child, who attends a college-prep type school within a large city school district, does not read novels (or poetry/ plays) in her English classes. Instead of reading Dickens, Hemingway, Shakespeare and the works of the Lake poets, they are reading manuals of various types. The math and science classes she takes are beyond any I took in school, but we read major novels in my high school lit classes, and in my AP class my senior year, we read both volumes of the Norton anthology of British literature (it included the unabridged Cantebury Tales, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Henry V), and a similar one volume book of American literature. We also spent two weeks on Death of A Salesman and had to do oral presentations on a novel we chose from a list (I chose Tess of The D'Ubervilles).
The American lit part also included memorizing the Gettysburg Address, reading the essays of James Baldwin and listening to recorded speeches by JFK and MLK. All of the reading assignments had written assignments connected to them, whether a short essay or a long paper. This was in a public high school in 1978-82.

One of my college friends, who should have been kicked out of school at various times for her academic problems (but never was because she is black), was amazed when I told her if I was a high school lit teacher I'd assign the kids to 1. read Hamlet, 2. watch two different movies versions of the play, and 3. compare and contrast the movies to the script in a paper, noting things the director deleted or moved around. She thought that was expecting too much of high school students. I told her that's the problem, nobody expects anything from high school students anymore.

Moby

01-09-2013, 01:35 PM

I am so sad to say my son falls into this group.
I raised him conservative. College undid all I taught him.
He did nothing but get stoned at Texas Tech and now feels
I should still support him at 21 years old after spending $50K
for two years at school only for him to get booted out.

I cut off all money to him, he's a landscaper now.
He hates me. He feels he should roll through life
getting buzzed anytime he wants. He lives in Washington state now.
He's very excited they legalized pot.
I'm very sad over it all.

Rockntractor

01-09-2013, 02:31 PM

I am so sad to say my son falls into this group.
I raised him conservative. College undid all I taught him.
He did nothing but get stoned at Texas Tech and now feels
I should still support him at 21 years old after spending $50K
for two years at school only for him to get booted out.

I cut off all money to him, he's a landscaper now.
He hates me. He feels he should roll through life
getting buzzed anytime he wants. He lives in Washington state now.
He's very excited they legalized pot.
I'm very sad over it all.

I can only begin to understand how you feel, hopefully he will remember the foundation you gave him later in life when he fails, and returns to it.

Starbuck

01-09-2013, 03:37 PM

Wow. Welcome aboard, Moby. A lot of us have grown children - or at least they should be grown, judging by their birth date - and sympathize with you. It's not like you did anything wrong, though. In fact, you did a lot right. I'm betting the day will come when he will wake up.

There are an awful lot of good comments in this thread. Lots of interest, it seems.

linda22003

01-09-2013, 03:51 PM

One of my college friends, who should have been kicked out of school at various times for her academic problems (but never was because she is black), was amazed when I told her if I was a high school lit teacher I'd assign the kids to 1. read Hamlet, 2. watch two different movies versions of the play, and 3. compare and contrast the movies to the script in a paper, noting things the director deleted or moved around. She thought that was expecting too much of high school students. I told her that's the problem, nobody expects anything from high school students anymore.

When I was in high school, we would have considered that a vacation from homework, and would have loved such an easy, entertaining assignment. :)

noonwitch

01-09-2013, 04:00 PM

I am so sad to say my son falls into this group.
I raised him conservative. College undid all I taught him.
He did nothing but get stoned at Texas Tech and now feels
I should still support him at 21 years old after spending $50K
for two years at school only for him to get booted out.

I cut off all money to him, he's a landscaper now.
He hates me. He feels he should roll through life
getting buzzed anytime he wants. He lives in Washington state now.
He's very excited they legalized pot.
I'm very sad over it all.

It's too bad he hates you for doing the right thing. If he's a landscaper, he probably can roll through life getting stoned whenever he wants. He just won't make as much money as he would if he completed college successfully. We all have to decide what is most important to us in life, and he chose weed, at least for now.

Other than your son acting like a dick in general to you, I am most sympathetic because you already spent the money for 2 years of college before he decided it wasn't for him.

This is your solace: some day, your kid will be a father. At some point after that, he is going to want to dump the kid with you for weekends here and there, and during vacations. That is your chance to get even-take the kid to church/Sunday school, fill his head full of conservative ideas in subtle and loving way. Your son will want the free and safe childcare more than he will care about the ideology you share with your grandchild.

Novaheart

01-09-2013, 11:17 PM

I am so sad to say my son falls into this group.
I raised him conservative. College undid all I taught him.
He did nothing but get stoned at Texas Tech and now feels
I should still support him at 21 years old after spending $50K
for two years at school only for him to get booted out.

I cut off all money to him, he's a landscaper now.
He hates me. He feels he should roll through life
getting buzzed anytime he wants. He lives in Washington state now.
He's very excited they legalized pot.
I'm very sad over it all.

Some people screw off a year or three. San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland are full of them. Eventually they realize that the price of poverty and hipness is too high. I was waiting tables (two jobs) and paying $1275 a month rent in 1984. I suddenly realized that San Francisco was not where I wanted to be.

Starbuck

01-18-2013, 03:49 PM

*BUMP*

More, on the same subject, by the same author. For those of you who do not know, a popular college football player announced that his grandmother and his girlfriend both died. It turned out that his girlfriend never existed, but he thought she did!
It's interesting. And sad.

Now, America knows that Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o never had a girlfriend named Lennay Kekua.

Despite the fact that Notre Dame—and the national college football community as a whole—swooned over tidbits of Te’o’s tragic three-year romance, including Kekua having surviving a car accident only to, later, succumb to leukemia, his girlfriend was a fake. She never even existed. All she ever was were contrived messages on Twitter and elsewhere. Her pretty photograph had been stolen off the Facebook account of another woman.

Te’o insists he was duped by someone who wanted him to fall in love with an imposter, with a ghost created by today’s technology—a phenomenon known as “catfishing.” Yet, many inconsistencies in Te’o’s own story of the couple’s supposed romance raise the question of whether he was part of the scheme. If so, some theorize his motivation may have been to create a mythical, magical story to help propel him to the Heisman trophy.

Either way, Te’o needs psychological help. One version of the story paints him vulnerable enough and naďve enough to declare his love and devotion publicly for someone he had never even met, nor Skyped with, let alone kissed. That version has him grieving her death like a devoted husband—despite never having laid eyes on her, nor touched her. The other version of the story paints him as a co-conspirator in fraud and deception, willing to manipulate the feelings of millions of people for his own pleasure or advancement—a younger, even sicker version of Lance Armstrong.

And either way, Te’o is the poster boy for a phenomenon I have been writing about for years, and which threatens our culture in a dramatic way: The erosion of reality and embrace of fiction via social networking, “reality” TV and technology.

Call it The Delusion Disease.

The same forces that have fueled the creation of a generation of deluded narcissists, with more on the way, are hijacking our attention and emotions and making us devote them to false people and false stories. The tale of Te’o is a close relative to that of Balloon Boy—the fake story of a boy who was supposedly adrift inside a capsule beneath a homemade air balloon (when he was actually at home the whole time).